Rasmussen: Majority of Latinos in Arizona support letting cops check for immigration status?

posted at 10:34 pm on April 27, 2010 by Allahpundit

I’ve got a question mark in the headline because, insanely, Rasmussen didn’t refine his sample to isolate the data from Latinos. The racial demographics polled are white, black, and “other,” which presumably encompasses Latinos (30.1 percent of the state’s population as of 2008), Native Americans (4.9 percent), and Asians (2.5 percent). Here’s what he got when he asked respondents if they favor or oppose legislation that would let cops stop suspected illegals to check their immigration status. Click the image to enlarge.

Fully 70 percent overall support this part of the law, and given the fact that Latinos compose most of the “other” category, a majority of their demographic must be in favor too. A few caveats, though. One: Rasmussen polls likely voters, so this is obviously a sample of citizens. Other polls that use “adults” as their sample are bound to show sharply lower numbers since they’ll include some illegals too. Two: Notwithstanding the support for letting cops inquire, 53 percent overall say they’re either very or somewhat concerned that the law will lead to civil-rights violations. Among the “other” group, it’s 54 percent — but of that number, 40 percent say they’re very concerned and just 14 percent say somewhat. (Among all likely voters, that split is 23/30.) So yeah, it’s an issue, and if it starts happening, expect support to start crumbling.

Exit question: Why didn’t Rasmussen emphasize this in his write-up of the data? Is he saving that for tomorrow?

Update: Another worthy caveat from the comments: The sub-sample of Latino likely voters must be relatively small, which would mean a large margin of error. That might explain why Rasmussen didn’t flag it. Just flag this result now for comparison purposes, as there’ll be plenty of more extensive polling in the days ahead.

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